Monday, February 23, 2015

Waing Maw Township, Kachin State, Myanmar, January 2015: Twenty year-old Yan Wai has long waited for this moment. “Almost three years ago, when I first arrived at the camp, there was no toilet, no water supply and no proper accommodation for us”, Yan Wai said. “We were living from hand to mouth”.

Friday, February 20, 2015

For the past two years, UNICEF has been discussing the opportunities for Myanmar to invest a greater part of its revenues into services for families and children, and in particular to the Social Protection Strategy. UNICEF wants to ensure that the most vulnerable families and children in Myanmar society are not by-passed by the current economic and social change.

In February 2015, UNICEF met with Parliamentarians to call for more investment in children now, for a brighter future for Myanmar. As Parliamentarians were discussing this year’s budget they had an important opportunity to take action and make the budget work for Myanmar’s children.

“It now all depends on policy makers, including the Parliamentarians, to make social protection a reality for millions of children and their families, from the 2015/2016 budget", said Bertrand Bainvel, UNICEF Representative to Myanmar.

"To build its future, Myanmar needs to invest right now in its people, starting with every child," concluded Bertrand Bainvel.

With 111 living languages, Myanmar is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. The seven main ethnic language clusters (Chin, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan) are spoken by more than 23 million people and around 32 million people speak the national language, Myanmar.For children who speak ethnic languages, Mother Tongue Based-Multi-Lingual Education (MTB-MLE), particularly in the early grades, is critical for increasing equitable access to school, improving cognitive development and learning outcomes, and reducing repetition and dropout rates. In Myanmar’s ethnically diverse society, language is also closely connected with identity, culture, and belonging.

Like many families, Pyae Pyae Cho and Cho Mar Oo’s parents struggle to make a living doing odd jobs. "Their parents are very poor and sometimes have to go outside of the village to find work. They often cannot provide nutritious food for the children to eat", said FPE Regional Monitor, U Tin Ngwe. For this reason, the two sisters could not learn well at regular primary school.

Non-Formal Primary Education (NFPE) enables marginalised children who have dropped out of school, or who never had the chance to attend primary school, to realise their human right to education.